Solicitor Carl Richmond spoke clearly as a swarm of journalists hung on his every word.

Standing next to Rebecca Leighton’s parents outside their Denton home, he read their daughter’s first reaction to being freed.

Hours earlier Ms Leighton, a 27-year-old nurse, had been released from Styal Prison after charges against her were dropped.

She had spent six weeks in custody as the prime suspect in an investigation into the deaths of patients at Stepping Hill hospital.

As duty solicitor on July 20, Richmond had been plunged – not for the first time – into a high profile criminal case. He sat at Ms Leighton’s side as detectives put to her that she was responsible for the contamination of saline with insulin at the hospital.

She was later charged with three counts of criminal damage intending to endanger life and three of criminal damage being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.

But the case against her crumbled and Richmond said he believed police and Crown Prosecution Service lawyers had ‘jumped the gun’ by charging on thin evidence on the assumption that damning evidence would emerge later. It hasn’t.

Richmond, 40, a partner in Manchester-based Middleweeks, has the right pedigree to handle big cases but he is no flash, brash lawyer. His criticism of the police and CPS handling of the case is typically reserved – but not without a sting.

“A lot of work was put in (by Middleweeks) but that was the right result. Perhaps there should have been a more considered approach before charging.”

With ample understatement he adds: “It would have been better, if it had been a case of the police saying ‘we have interviewed Rebecca for three days, there’s still a lot of work to do – let’s get proper information together and if we can, we can charge her later’.”

Richmond was born at North Manchester General Hospital in 1971, and raised on the Langley Estate in Middleton. At the age of 11 his family moved to Simister near Prestwich and he became a Bury Grammar School boy.

After taking a degree at Leeds Polytechnic and then his law finals he joined Middleweeks and had a ‘baptism of fire’ in 1993.

His first job was to be involved in the notorious case of Thomas Bourke, jailed for life for shooting dead two MOT officers at a garage in Stockport. He represented Walter, Thomas’ brother, who was charged with assisting an offender. All charges were dropped against him.

In March 2006 Richmond donned body armour and boarded a Hercules plane to Iraq as part of a defence team representing a group of British soldiers charged with the manslaughter of an Iraqi civilian.

He explains: “We were involved in four days of legal argument at a base in Basra. After that preliminary hearing, the Army dropped the charges against the soldiers.”

The soldiers had been accused of throwing the victim into a river but it was established they had actually been trying to rescue him.

“It was an experience going in to Basra with mortar bombs going off,” says Richmond.

Two months later he became embroiled in a case which would last three years and challenge a key part of the government’s anti-terrorism strategy. He regards this case as a high point in his career.

His ‘sustained effort’ led to the Home Secretary releasing in 2009 from virtual house arrest a Libyan regarded at the time as one of Britain’s most dangerous terrorist suspects. He had been subject to a controversial ‘control order’ because of his alleged links with Islamic terrorists but he was never charged and evidence of the allegations were never aired in a public court.

The control order was revoked and the suspect’s electronic tag removed.

Richmond said: “I was comfortable with my belief that he was not a risk or that he was involved in anything that would be a risk. It was a lot of hard work. We went to the House of Lords twice and the Court of Appeal.

“We had our own views as to why he was targeted. The irony is that the organisation he was supposedly linked to was supported to overthrow Gaddafi. We got the feeling his family had been in dispute with the Gaddafi family.”

Richmond says that his rapid career rise has its foundations in a family break-up.

“I have a very influential mother, Lynne. My father left us when I was about 16 and my younger brother Gareth was 11. It was a difficult time for us – but it made us stronger.

“I thought I needed a profession to make my mum proud. She worked hard to put us in a position to get through school and help me fund university.”

Lynne is director of the Prestwich-based care home Brookvale.

“She rose from a sister to become manager and that gave me a lot of drive and encouragement,” he adds.

He also puts his success down to the support of his wife, Jennifer, with whom he has two daughters, Grace, six, and Gabriella, two. Grace made her ‘debut’ on Saturday watching Carl’s beloved Manchester City demolish Wigan.